Numerous cooking devices are known in the art for cooking meat and other food products. One such device is a clamshell griddle or grill disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,743, 5,910,207, 5,755,150, and 5,569,478, each of which is incorporated by reference herein. These clamshell grills are typically used in quick service restaurants to cook meat, for example, one or more hamburger patties, efficiently in a short amount of time between heated upper and lower cooking surfaces having a fixed gap spacing therebetween.
When cooking a plurality of meat items, conventional grills and methods do not account for differences in the thickness of each meat item due to the fixed gap spacing between the upper and lower cooking surfaces. Therefore, known grills and cooking methods may not uniformly cook the meat from item to item if there is any substantial variance in meat thickness from item to item.
Further, quick service restaurants may freeze their meat to maintain the freshness of the meat and to enable the meat to be used on an as-needed basis. It is well known, however, that known grills and grill cooking methods often sear or burn the surface of the meat during cooking due to the initial compression of the meat and the substantial temperature difference between the frozen meat and the heating surfaces. Further, due to the high temperature of the heating surfaces and the cooking time required to thaw and thereafter cook frozen meat thoroughly, known grills and cooking methods often cause the cooked meat to lose tenderness and a substantial amount of internal moisture.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved device and method for cooking meat on a grill which improves the taste, texture, and mouthfeel of the cooked meat product and more uniformly cooks a plurality of food items, such as hamburger patties.